Design verification is a common process for testing a newly designed integrated circuit, board, or system-level architecture, to confirm that it complies with the requirements defined by a specification of an architecture for that device. Design verification for a device under test (DUT) may be performed on the actual device, but usually a simulation model of the device is tested.
Verification of electronic designs has typically three forms. At an early stage, before the electronic design is implemented in hardware, simulation is conducted on a model of the design. Another form is emulation, in which one electronic hardware is used to mimic the behavior of another (tested) electronic hardware. At more advanced stages of design development a system on chip is validated, in a process which is typically referred to as post-silicon validation. Post-silicon validation is the last stage in the electronic design development, before it is manufactured.
Emulation is a process that involves replicating behavior of a hardware device under design using a software environment that is used by manufacturing automation control engineers to validate their programmable logic controller (PLC) files, ladder logic files and human-machine interface (HMI) files before moving to the physical plant environment.